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butterfly

America’s Butterflies Are Disappearing At An Alarming Rate

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A new study has found that America’s butterfly population is dwindling at a “catastrophic” rate due to climate change, habitat loss, and insecticides. Some populations have decreased by 22% since 2000. 

This study marks the first nationwide systematic analysis of butterfly population densities. They found that throughout the lower 48 states, butterfly populations have been declining at a rate of 1.3% annually since the year 2000. 114 species have reflected significant declines with only 9 species increasing. The study itself was published in the journal Science. 

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“Butterflies have been declining the last 20 years, and we don’t see any sign that that’s going to end,” said study co-author Nick Haddad, an entomologist at Michigan State University, to the Associated Press.

AP reported that the study collected its data utilizing over 76,000 surveys from 35 monitoring programs around the country and “blended” the information to count over 12 million butterflies over the past 25 years. 

Entomologist David Wagner, who wasn’t involved in the study, praised it for offering valuable information to America’s butterfly populations, but emphasized that the data was concerning, calling it “catastrophic and saddening.”

“In just 30 or 40 years we are talking about losing half the butterflies (and other insect life) over a continent! The tree of life is being denuded at unprecedented rates.”

“The United States has 650 butterfly species, but 96 species were so sparse they didn’t show up in the data and another 212 species were not found in sufficient numbers to calculate trends,” said study lead author Collin Edwards, an ecologist and data scientist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

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“I’m probably most worried about the species that couldn’t even be included in the analyses because they were so rare,” said entomologist Karen Oberhauser. 

This data is also so concerning for experts because it offers insights into the future of humans and our environment. 

“The loss of butterflies, parrots and porpoises is undoubtedly a bad sign for us, the ecosystems we need and the nature we enjoy,” said butterfly expert Anurag Agrawal.

“They are telling us that our continent’s health is not doing so well … Butterflies are an ambassador for nature’s beauty, fragility and the interdependence of species. They have something to teach us.”

“What’s happening to butterflies in the United States is probably happening to other, less-studied insects across the continent and world,” Wagner said. 

“Butterflies are also pollinators, though not as prominent as bees, and are a major source of pollination of the Texas cotton crop,” Haddad said.

cancer

New Drug Trial Shows Reduced Risk Of Breast Cancer Recurrence For Some Early-Stage Patients

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According to a new study, a new drug used for patients in the early stage of the most common kind of breast cancer (HR+/HER2 – breast cancer) helped significantly reduce the risk of the cancer returning after treatment.

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covid

New Study Reveals Details Of Lingering Covid-19 Symptoms After Infection 

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A recent study published in Nature Communications has given a larger understanding over lingering Covid-19 symptoms experienced by people who contracted the virus. The study utilized electronic health records from the National Institutes of Health’s RECOVER Initiative. 

The study was led by Dr. Rainu Kaushal, the chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine and physician-in-chief of population health sciences at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. The study gave a deeper insight into the reasoning behind lingering Covid-19 symptoms after one experiences an acute infection. 

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The study also analyzed the likelihood of these symptoms and how they differ throughout various populations and demographics throughout the United States. 

“Long COVID is a new disease that is very complicated and quite difficult to characterize. It affects multiple organs and presents a severe burden to society, making it urgent that we define this disease and determine how well that definition applies among different populations. This paper provides the basis for furthering research on long COVID,” said Dr. Chengxi Zang, an instructor in population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine and lead author on the paper. 

The team utilized multiple research outlets to make their conclusions, including health records from two clinical research networks within the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network. One set of data included information from 11 million New York-based patients, and another network that was utilized included 16.8 million patients from Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. 

The research conclusions the team came to showed there was a large list of diagnoses that occurred more frequently in individuals who had Covid-19 compared to those who didn’t. In New York City specifically, the researchers found that residents who had Covid experienced more types of symptoms and were at a higher risk of long Covid. 

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Between New York City and Florida, populations had specific conditions including dementia, hair loss, sores in the stomach, fatigue, and blood clots in the lung. 

“Our approach, which uses machine learning with electronic health records, provides a data-driven way to define long COVID and determine how generalizable our definition of the disease is,” Dr. Zang said. 

“Some of the differences between the results from the two populations might be explained by the fact that New York City had a more diverse patient population, endured one of the first waves of the pandemic and faced the lack of personal protective equipment such as masks, compared with Florida,” Dr. Zang said.

“In this new research, we examined a broad list of potential long COVID conditions one by one. These findings can help us better recognize the broad involvement of multiple organ systems in long COVID, and design appropriate plans for patient management and treatment development,” said Dr. Fei Wang, co-senior author of the study.

Positive Covid Case

CDC Study Suggests Covid-19 Cases May Be 10 Times Higher Than Reported

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A new study was published by JAMA this week that suggests states within America have been drastically under-reporting the amount of positive Covid-19 cases within them. While previously many healthcare experts discussed how a lack of testing resources/facilities could skew the data and just how severe the pandemic actually is in America, now they’re claiming that even the data that is recorded isn’t fully accurate. 

The study itself was performed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and it analyzed the routine blood samples of more than 16,000 individuals between the dates of March 23rd and May 12th. 90% of the samples came from individuals over the age of 18 and more than half were women. 10 different states provided samples for the study and each was tested for the presence of Covid-19 antibodies. 

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While the number of infections represented just a small portion of the population in each region that the samples were collected from, the number of positive results was much higher than expected. Specifically, the study claims that the number of infections was 6-24 times greater than what had been reported by the media for each specific region. 

Now, based on the studies results, experts are claiming the positive amount of Covid-19 cases in America could be up to 10 times greater than what’s being reported on the news everyday. Dr. William Schaffner is an infectious disease expert who works at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He recently discussed with the media the reasons behind why this data is so skewed beyond just a lack of testing facilities. 

“The new data was probably a consequence of asymptomatic transmission. This virus is getting out beyond us. If you translate it to today, as much as you think is out there, there’s more, a lot more. The house is on fire.”

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Dr. Amesh Adalja, who’s been working on data collection at Johns Hopkins University since the beginning of this pandemic, agrees with Schaffner’s point that asymptomatic individuals are either overlooked as not being a serious threat, or just are unaware of the fact that they’re spreading the virus. 

Adalja claimed that asymptomatic individuals are not getting tested and some are just going about their daily lives as if nothings wrong, which thus transmits the virus to other people who may not be lucky enough to be symptom-free. 

“If you’re a person that’s sick with mild illness and you don’t want to wait in your car for eight hours at a drive-through to get a test result back in 10 days, then why would you?”

While Adalja understands the logic, it doesn’t trump the fact that the world is still in the middle of the worst public health crisis in decades, and hundreds of thousands of individuals are dying every single week as a result of these asymptomatic individuals who are continuously spreading the virus every time they step outside. 

While the world continues to wait for a vaccine, it’s imperative that we listen to our healthcare providers and wear a mask in public, social distance, and wash our hands/bodies vigorously every day. Even if you feel 100% healthy yourself, you never know what type of damage you can unknowingly be doing if you’re actively going against these government regulations.